Mike Babcock was a man with a plan on Saturday. Jermaine Gresham Jersey . The Canadian mens Olympic hockey team head coach arranged to take in some mens curling with a bunch of players before shuffling off to the nearby Bolshoy Ice Dome to scout the Russia-United States mens hockey game. Sometime in the evening he planned to assemble goalkeepers Roberto Luongo and Carey Price to inform them who would start in Canadas game against Finland on Sunday. Babcock would not reveal at his noon-hour (local time) press briefing whether it would be Luongo, the incumbent, or Price, who has been more consistent this season and played better in the games leading to the Olympic break. But the Canadian coach did remark that he arrived in Sochi with a plan — and nothing transpired in the wins over Norway and Austria to alter his blueprint. "Ive had lots of time,” he said. “We as a management team, and a coaching staff, we watched the NHL all year and we picked the two goalies that we think have got an opportunity. We brought [Mike Smith] to be in the role [of third goalie] and now well just go from here and watch. “We did the same thing last time. We had a plan. We understand and I said this a number of times you get one change in this tournament and you can still win." Like in Vancouver four years ago. Babcock chose veteran Martin Brodeur to be No. 1, but after he faltered in Canadas third game of the tournament — a 5-3 loss against the United States — Roberto Luongo moved in to win four games in a row to help Canada strike gold. Luongo or Price isnt the only entry on Babcocks checklist. There has been some clamour to find captain Sidney Crosby some new linemates. Chris Kunitz, who plays on the left side with Crosby in Pittsburgh, hasnt exhibited much in his first tour-of-duty with the Canadian Olympic team. "The first line in the last two games has generated a ton of scoring chances, point-blankers, they havent gone in,” Babcock said. “Do we worry that much about that or do we just know good players score in the end? "Lots of times in the Stanley Cup playoffs your team goes a ways and your best players have no points in the first round. Someone else picks them up, but by the time its all over theyre leading the thing in scoring. Its not about that, its about finding a way to be the best team." Babcock gave his players Saturday off to recharge. The 25 of them already played a combined 1,392 NHL games this season before landing in Sochi. The coaching staff put them through three long practices before the Olympic tournament opener against Austria on Thursday, so they needed a break. “A big part of it was the NHL schedule,” Babcock said. “You can just imagine the amount of meetings with their own NHL teams to prepare for each and every game. I just know from our team it seems like we played every single game. It was exhausting. “Then you travel over here. Then you jam in all the information and then we practiced them hard. We practiced for 56 minutes the day before our first game. That would never happen in the NHL. “Everybody needs to breathe.” Another adjustment has been the late starting times for Canada – 9 p.m. Sochi time. “We tried to turn 9 oclock into 7 oclock over here,” Babcock said. “But its 2:30 in the morning and youre sitting around every night. I saw [Canadian defenceman] Duncan Keith this morning and Dunc said he had to race over to McDonalds to get an egg mcmuffin. So he had to get up early. Priorities, right?” Chad Williams Jersey . I kept my eyes focused up on the camera during each approach. I just tried to stay focused on my form, as I didnt know what the ball reaction was. I was quite emotional at the end. I did not actually see any of the shots in the game until I got home and watched the video. Jaron Brown Jersey . Anor had not scored since getting his first two goals of the season vs. Philadelphia on March 22 but struck with laser precision from distance in the 56th and 75th minutes. Montreal (3-10-5) lost its third straight and Impact coach Frank Klopas said it literally was a case of his players not stepping up. http://www.azcardinalsfanspro.com/Black-Mike-Iupati-Cardinals-Jersey.html?cat=869 . Indeed, must be among the greatest challenges in all of sports. The pressure he applies, from set to set, game to game, point to point, shot to shot.If there’s one area in hockey analytics that’s lagging behind, it’s primarily in the realm of goaltender studies. Outside of multi-year even-strength save percentage – which, of course, requires a goaltender to face thousands of shots over a series of seasons – there simply isn’t a ton to measure a goaltender’s true talent level. While save percentage is a decent metric over longer samples, it’s subject to the same, wild fluctuations that shooting percentage experiences in smaller ones. For one brief example, consider quickly the below table of six goaltenders around the league: Small Sample Goaltending Performance Goaltender Team 2014-2015 EV SV% Craig Anderson Ottawa .963 Corey Crawford Chicago .941 Ondrej Pavelec Winnipeg .929 Henrik Lundqvist N.Y. Rangers .916 Tuukka Rask Boston .914 Semyon Varlamov Colorado .907 Anyone willing to take the first three goaltenders over the next three goaltenders going forward? One of the things that clouds smaller sample save percentages, aside from random variance, is fluctuation in a team’s ability to prevent shooters from generating shot-attempts in scoring chance areas. This is particularly important, because we know shot distance correlates well with shooting percentage. Shot distance (as a proxy for “shot quality”) may pale in importance compared to territorial control in today’s National Hockey League, but it still holds a sliver of importance. And, since team effects aren’t equal across all thirty teams, it is data worth considering. Over at War on Ice, Andrew Thomas has started to compile save percentages for goaltenders adjusted based on the quality of the shots they have seen. His adjustments weight the likelihood of every shot against becoming a goal against based on the distance of said shot. Thus, his adjusted save percentage both captures the goaltender’s ability to stop shots, and the possibility that certain goaltenders simply face shots of varying difficulty due to team effects. The adjustments are fairly small, but in some cases, important. For example, if a goaltender stops 92% of shots he’s faced, is he playing well? Generally, the answer is yes. But what if he went through a three-week stretch where opposing teams haven’t been able to muster much in the scoring chance department? Is that 92% number still good? Is it possible that 92% is underwhelming, failing to meet expectations? By grabbing the unadjusted and adjusted EVSV% at War on Ice, we can quickly graph out what goaltenders are seeing their save percentages inflated a bit by relatively easy shot distance faced, and what goaltenders are seeing their save percentages deflated by relatively difficult shot distance faced. What I’ve done is charted the difference between the ‘Unadjusted EVSV%’ and ‘Adjusted EVSV% (here referred to as ‘Delta Quality’). Negative goaltenders see their save percentages drop after accounting for shot distance faced. Positive goaltenders see their save percentages rise after accounting for shot distance faced. DELTA SAVE PERCENTAGE Goalie Team Unadjusted EV SV% Adjusted EV SV% Delta EV SV% Henrik Lundqvist NYR 91.6% 92.6% +1.0% Cam Ward CAR 90.3% 91.3% +1.0% Semyon Varlamov COL 90.7% 91.5% +0.9% Carey Price MTL 91.6% 92.4% +0.8% Marc-Andre Fleury PIT 94.1% 94.6% +0.5% Kari LLehtonen DAL 92. John Brown Jersey. 6% 93.1% +0.5% Mike Smith ARI 90.6% 90.9% +0.3% Michal Neuvirth BUF 92.5% 92.8% +0.3% Jonas Hiller CGY 93.6% 93.9% +0.3% Ondrej Pavelec WPG 92.9% 93.1% +0.2% Frederik Andersen ANA 94.8% 95.0% +0.2% Corey Crawford CHI 94.2% 94.4% +0.2% Jonathan Bernier TOR 92.4% 92.6% +0.1% Jaroslav Halak NYI 92.0% 92.1% +0.1% Jonathan Quick LA 95.3% 95.5% +0.1% Ryan Miller VAN 91.6% 91.7% +0.1% Ben Bishop TB 91.3% 91.4% +0.1% Ben Scrivens EDM 90.2% 90.2% 0.0% Jhonas Enroth BUF 91.8% 91.8% 0.0% Antti Niemi SJ 92.4% 92.4% 0.0% Jimmy Howard DET 92.1% 91.9% -0.2% Braden Holtby WSH 90.6% 90.3% -0.3% Roberto Luongo FLA 95.0% 94.7% -0.3% Brian Elliott STL 94.2% 93.6% -0.5% Pekka Rinne NSH 95.4% 94.9% -0.5% Sergei Bobrovsky CBJ 90.5% 89.8% -0.7% Cory Schneider NJ 92.6% 91.8% -0.8% Darcy Kuemper MIN 91.0% 90.2% -0.8% Craig Anderson OTT 96.3% 95.4% -0.9% Tuukka Rask BOS 91.5% 90.5% -1.1% Steve Mason PHI 92.0% 90.8% -1.3% Click here for a graphical representation of the above chart. At the poles, we can see a few notable goalies who see a fairly significant reduction or bump based on the shot distance of opposing shooters. The two most interesting goalies at the bottom, to me, are Craig Anderson and Tuukka Rask. Craig Anderson (.963 EVSV%, .954 aEVSV%) has been absolutely stellar for Ottawa, but maybe a small reason why the Senators have been piling up wins despite poor possession numbers is that their starting goaltender has seen slightly easier than expected shots against. Tuukka Rask (.914 EVSV%, .904 aEVSV%) is notable for another reason entirely – he’s struggled for Boston in the early going, but it’s not because he’s facing particularly difficult shots. Rask’s been one of the best goaltenders in the league for a long time and this is almost certainly a blip on the radar but, based on this, it’s possible he’s been even a bit worse than initially thought. On the other side, we see the polar opposite of Tuukka Rask in Henrik Lundqvist. Lundqvist (.916 EVSV%, .926 aEVSV%) has also seemed to struggle in the early parts of the season, but he sees a nice little bump in his adjusted percentages because the shots he’s faced have come from in-tight. Cam Ward (.889 EVSV%, .900 aEVSV%) has seen his percentages sliding for years now, and I think skepticism about his game is warranted at this point. But, here’s one data point in his favor – Carolina wasn’t particularly kind as a team to Ward, and he ends up with the most favorable adjustment in save percentage of any goalie in the league. Still, it should be noted that Ward’s adjusted save percentage doesn’t speak highly of him as a goalie. Adjusted save percentage is far from the singular data-point every hockey executive wants, but it is another tool in the tool belt – one that will help us just a bit in contextualizing goaltender performance. Cheap NFL JerseysWholesale JerseysWholesale NFL JerseysJerseys From ChinaWholesale NFL JerseysCheap NFL JerseysCheap Jerseys ' ' '